Manned Moon mission planned by ISRO by 2020

India plans to send a manned mission to space after it launches Chandrayaan-2.
ISRO chairman G. Madhavan Nair has said “The (manned) moon mission is a tough task and to achieve that our first task is to send an Indian astronaut on a manned mission to space, who will orbit the earth and return. For this, the sanction of the government has to come. We plan to achieve this by 2015.”

Nair also said that the next moon mission by the US and China is planned for 2020, and that India will be ready by then.

To launch the moon mission by 2020, the space mission in 2015 would be very useful.

The ISRO chairman also said that if India achieves the target of sending a manned mission to the Moon by 2020, then it would make it to the class of leading space-faring nations.

Before the first manned space mission, ISRO has planned its second unmanned Moon mission, Chandrayaan-2, in 2012. The Chandrayaan-2 mission, which will cost approximately Rs 425 crore, consists of a motorized rover and a lunar orbiter. The motorized rover’s weight will be in the range of 30 kg – 100 kg. The rover tha runs on solar power, will have a life-span of 30 days in operation.

Chandrayaan-2 will be launched using the GSLV launch vehicle. Upon landing on the moon, the motorized rover will detach from the orbiter and collect rock and soil samples for chemical analysis. The collected data will be sent to Chandrayaan-2, which will transmit it to Earth.

Chandrayaan-2 has been approved by the Indian government and has been given a sanction for the requisite funds. ISRO has said that Chandrayaan-2 will be a fully indigenous mission. It was earlier believed that Chandrayaan-2 would be a joint project between India and Russia, and it would carry payload from international space agencies as well.

Meanwhile, Britain has said that it will launch its first unmanned Moon mission between 2012 and 2014.  The Moon mission would be called Moon Lightweight Interior and Telecommunications Experiment or MoonLITE.

The main aim of MoonLITE will be to investigate the causes of moonquakes in lunar rocks. It will also study the chemical composition of the rocks, and search for water.

The MoonLITE will fire four penetrator probes into different areas of the Moon’s surface.